How can I describe, my beloved one,
The mountain’s glory in the morning sun?
How can I tell you of the silent glade
In the snowy depths of the forest shade?
And how shall I capture for you the spell
Of the crystal showers in the frozen dell?
Schloss Kassegg.
February 1985
Five to eight,
Mist outside,
The lighthouse
Foghorn blows
And day tries
To get up.
Airport closed,
Dead taxis
Wait in lines,
No Sunday
Newspapers,
Dull morning.
Black trees in
Grey meadows,
Still cows built
Into mist
Imitate
The foghorn,
Calling down
The Cowman
Wellingtoned,
Great mallet
On shoulder,
To alter
Their tethers.
15th April 1971
She was seated before me
Listening intently
The lines of her fair neck
Curving so gracefully
Down to golden shoulders.
But it was her long hair,
Plaited nonchalantly,
Which so distracted me.
From a thick auburn crown,
Three separate tresses
Set out resolutely
On their downward journey
To the small of her back,
Meandering slowly
In time to the music,
Now above, now below,
A rare relationship
Of three equal suitors,
Intimate, enfolding,
Sinuous, caressing,
Each lover approaching
The other obliquely
With the same strategy,
Now from left, now from right,
Abandoning thin
Sacrificial wisps
En route,
Each fusing finally,
Molten sand, copper, gold,
All capitulating,
Exhausted totally,
In the baroque coda
Of a black silk ribbon.
Written in St Gallen, Austria, during the music festival in Schloss Gallenstein.
August 1994
I have a homing instinct for the stars 
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